For the first time, after years of public questions and congressional hearings, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to take the stand in front of a jury and a group of bereaved parents to defend the alleged effects of the company’s products on teenagers. Faced with accusations that Facebook and Instagram sought to push teens into a cycle of dependence, Zuckerberg declared that he is “not trying to maximize the amount of time people spend every month” on the platforms.
The trial is central to the future of social media, and Zuckerberg must contend with the public record on Meta’s efforts to make itself an indispensable part of teens’ lives. Meta in the past, as Zuckerberg acknowledged at the trial, sought to to keep its users on the screen; Zuckerberg himself a decade ago urged the company to increase the share of users’ time it took. Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram division, once set the total time teens spent on the app as a company goal.
